Do your ears hear the same as mine?

[Scp53]

I stumbled upon this article and found it very interesting. its called Do you hear what I hear. http://www.mercenary.com/doyouhewhihe.html

[jheis]

For your sake, I hope not.

James

[DrWho]

Much ado about nothing...gotta love those articles that try to convey a point and then finish with no conclusion.

Btw, I disagree with his sentiments for two reasons:

First, he puts too much importance on "natural" sounds. Last I checked,

all sound is compromised of sound waves...reagardless of the source.

Secondly, he ignores the fact that our ears have the same transfer

function for both listening to the live instruments and for listening

to the recording. So if I somehow manage to get a guitar recording to

sound identical to a real guitar, then the next person that comes along

is going to percieve the same thing.

[Cal Blacksmith]

DrWho, in your post to nullify the article, you prove the point!

The whole point of the article is not what and how do our ears transfer

to our brain and is that the same from person to person, the point is

that with shrinking exposure to "live" music, the standard of what an

instrument sounds like is changing from the sound it makes in real life

vs what it sounds like recorded, amplified and distorted.

He starts the article with exactly the same argument that

you use to disagree with him! The crux of the matter is

that without a standard, any sound will do. To remove the

discussion from the audio world for a moment,

how long is an inch? Is it what your tape measure says? How do you

know? Where did the reference come from that the maker of the tape

measure used? Is it a first generation measurement or has it been

copied from another tape measure that was copied from another tape

measure copied from yet another measure? How far is it from the

standard? If we don't have a standard, we will soon all have a

different size inch, who is right? But in fact there is a standard and

it is kept with the bureau of standards and it can be checked any time

needed to maintain accuracy. In audio, the standard is the real instrument.

He asks in the article, if you never listen to live music, how do you

know that the sounds you are listening to sounds like the real

instrument? He uses the example of an old synthesizer, with known

errors in the reproduction of the sounds of the instruments and how to

him it is clear that it does not sound like the real thing but to one

of his students that has had limited first hand knowledge, it sounds

perfect!! If that student then uses that reference to guide them in

mixing a recording, and it differs from the reference the student has

in their mind, will the listener accept the mix as real and thus use IT

as a reference? The writer laments that this is exactly what is

happening.

[DrWho]

aye, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with a changing reference

frame! Musical sounds are like language....they change over time. Let's

use a viola as an example (because that's something I play). Who sets

the standard for what my viola is supposed to sound like? I by no means

have the highest quality viola, but what reference frame am I using to

make this claim? If you go back in history, you will notice that the

"natural viola sound" has been changing ever since it was first

created! In fact, there are many older pieces of music that just sound

bad today because we don't have the same viola sound as they did back.

When this sound is moved to say an electric viola, it is ridiculous to

claim that the electric should sound like the original! And in fact it

does not....it sounds better (a completely subjective claim I know).

The problem is that the entire audio scene is so up tight about

recreating the original sound when the customers driving the industry

only want entertainment. There is obviously something behind the crappy

compressed mp3's that people find very interesting so instead of

complaining about a changing reference frame, we should be spending

more time figuring out what sounds good and what doesn't. Heck, the

entire playback concept is so fundamently flawed anyway that even if we

could perfectly record an acoustical event, there is physically no way

to play it back.

In other words, there is nothing about a "perfect natural sound" to justify the claim that it results in more entertainment.

[Cal Blacksmith]

LOL! Good come back but how would you feel about a bad recording of

your viola becoming an electronic standard for what it should sound

like?

I seem to remember a debate similar to this in the 70s/80s about disco

and live music. In the end, live music won out and disco went the way

of the DoDo bird.[]

[DrWho]

I could care less if that bad recording ended up fitting the sound of the particular song it was being used for...

...which gets into a totally different topic of getting trapped by your medium, but let's not go there []

[D-MAN]

The Socratic answer is "what does a bananna taste like?"

DM

[nicholtl]

Describing coca-cola is just as difficult, I hear...